The only way to shut Carlin up.
This one hits me hard. Yeah yeah, give me a moment to wax nostalgic. A bell with a deep gorgeous gravelly tone. Cracked but singing on. He'd hate the sentimental verbosity of that.
I remember in one interview he spoke about his grandfather who had, by hand, copied out works of William Shakespeare for the sheer love of the language. You knew that every word Carlin uttered came from a ocean of choices and that each sparkling syllable meant what he wanted it to mean. He hated the creeping laziness of language that has taken over common parlance and I loved his linguistic precision.
But it wasn't language alone that drove him nuts, but the trend of using carefully neutered market-speak to blind ourselves to the realities of life and the choices that we make. We all paint our heroes with the motivations that we hold dear. I recognize this could be my own delusion. But I always felt that at the heart of Carlin's frustration was the belief that if we could just for a moment put aside our own lies, we might find something beautiful.
I will remember him as someone who knew to put aside cynicism in the presence of children, a man that could say more with less and (thanks to my wife's gentle reminder) a guide to a future utopia built on guitar riffs.
I remember in one interview he spoke about his grandfather who had, by hand, copied out works of William Shakespeare for the sheer love of the language. You knew that every word Carlin uttered came from a ocean of choices and that each sparkling syllable meant what he wanted it to mean. He hated the creeping laziness of language that has taken over common parlance and I loved his linguistic precision.
But it wasn't language alone that drove him nuts, but the trend of using carefully neutered market-speak to blind ourselves to the realities of life and the choices that we make. We all paint our heroes with the motivations that we hold dear. I recognize this could be my own delusion. But I always felt that at the heart of Carlin's frustration was the belief that if we could just for a moment put aside our own lies, we might find something beautiful.
I will remember him as someone who knew to put aside cynicism in the presence of children, a man that could say more with less and (thanks to my wife's gentle reminder) a guide to a future utopia built on guitar riffs.